Conventional automotive seats generally include spring members such as coil springs, S-shaped springs, or formed wire springs mounted on a seat frame, a pad material such as a foamed material, rocking material, or cotton placed thereon, and a skin such as a vinyl leather, woven cloth, or leather covered thereon.
In order to enhance the elasticity or shock-absorbing properties, those in which a viscoelastic material is embedded in the pad material have been proposed.
Furthermore, when a user keeps sitting on a seat for many hours, those portions of the user that are held in contact with a seat cushion and a seat back become moist with sweat and, hence, an unpleasant feeling increases. To overcome this problem, seats having enhanced air permeability by forcibly feeding air from the inside of the seat cushion and the seat back have also been proposed.
On the other hand, seats or beds other than the automotive seats generally include a pad material placed on the frame and covered with a skin, and some of them also include spring members for enhancing the cushioning characteristics.
Although the spring members or the pad material acts to provide desired cushioning characteristics, some of the conventional seats or beds referred to above cannot eliminate a bottom-end shock, and such seats or beds are mostly heavy and costly.
In motorcycles having a viscoelastic material embedded in the pad material, if gasoline that has leaked out during refueling or water such as rainwater is splashed thereon and is brought into contact with the viscoelastic material, it sometimes changes the nature thereof. In the automotive seats, there is a possibility of fogging in which volatile components contained in the viscoelastic material fog window panes.
Although the seats in which air is forcibly fed from the inside of the seat cushion and the seat back have excellent air permeability, they are costly because they require a device for forcibly feeding air or an air passage formed in the pad material.
The present invention has been developed to overcome the above-described disadvantages. It is accordingly an objective of the present invention to provide a relatively light all-weather cushioning member or seat having a net-shaped skin that has excellent air permeability and heat dissipating characteristics while maintaining desired cushioning characteristics and eliminating a bottom-end shock.